Tools for developing Circular Solutions
What is the Circular Economy?
The circular economy shifts society from the “take, make, waste” linear model, that has led to significant environmental degradation and social inequality, to a circular model that keeps products and materials in use and regenerates natural systems.
The key principles are: reduce, reuse, repair and recycle.
While the circular economy has become a megatrend and is in 3x more conversations and debates than it was 5 years ago, global circularity as a percentage is actually declining. In 2018 the share of secondary materials in the economy was at 9.1%, in 2023 it had reduced to 7.2%
It’s critical that we look at how we can improve this and how we can effectively implement circularity in our businesses, industries and broader systems.
Implementing Circular Models
So how do we do that?
Well, the Circular Economy Foundation reported that successful systemic change would rely on three types of players: governments (for policies and incentives), financial actors (for creating ‘true prices’ with environmental costs and ensuring funding for circular solutions) and, finally, citizens (for upskilling and playing a role at home and in work).
At a business level, the key areas where we can lead the change are:
Campaigning for change, being on the right side of the debate when it comes to policies
Collaborating with our supply chains and systems that we play a role in
Investing our resources in and designing circular solutions
Leading the way for customers
In this post I’ll be focusing on some tangible tools and ideas that can help with points 2 and 3.
Innovating for change
To successfully implement Circular Models innovative thinking is required. Whether that be in how we influence customers to make positive behavioural changes, design products for durability, reuse, repair and easy recycling, or in how we explore new business models and recycling methods.
Below I will outline 3 tools that you can use to help your business explore and design circular solutions.
Tools for Circularity:
Below I want to introduce three tools:
The Flow Mapper
The Circular Business Model
Behavioural Economics Playing Cards
1.The Flow Mapper
In the last couple of years I have worked closely with Imperial College London and their Undaunted programme. Through this I have had the pleasure of connecting with Dr Marco Aurisicchio, an Associate Professor in the Dyson School at Imperial College London. Alongside Dr Anouk Zeeuw van der Laan, they have been developing a tool specifically to support the Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector to transition to the Circular Economy. It is a great visual support for understanding your current state and ideating towards a better, circular solution.
The Flow Mapper allows you to map the life of materials, components or products and then identify risk and opportunity areas. It provides prompt questions to help you dig into these areas, leading to greater understanding and ideas for how to improve.
2. The Circular Business Model Canvas by Eco Design Circle
With a background in innovation and entrepreneurship, it’s no surprise that I love a Business Model Canvas variant (a core tool for anyone in this space)! The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Eco Design Circle have a brilliant Circular Business Model canvas tool that helps you design new ideas, products and business models with the environmental and social impact in mind.
Its simplicity helps you run through different variations of the concept and explore the impacts of those differences. If you follow this link you will find both a pdf and a virtual whiteboard version that you can fill in, following the prompts on the right hand side.
3. Behavioural Economics Cards by Duke University
Where the first two tools have focused more on the design of products from a materials perspective, this final tool is one from the realm of behavioural psychology and is useful when considering ways to positively nudge consumers towards more circular behaviours. It can also be used when thinking about working with other stakeholders, for example influencing suppliers - we’re all human after all!
The pdf document contains a set of behavioural economics ‘playing cards’ developed by Duke University. The cards articulate concepts relating to how we behave, such as:
‘Anchoring’ - people are attached to their first decisions and also the first thing we hear related to a topic
‘Availability bias’ - people tend to focus on what easily comes to mind
‘Loss aversion’ - people try to prevent losses more than they try to make gains’
To use the tool, follow the method below:
Step 1 - Identify the circularity challenge / behaviour you want to tackle (e.g. “we create soft toys that could be easily repaired when worn out but customers throw them away”)
Step 2 - Look through the cards and come up with as many ideas as you can to change this behaviour (e.g. concept on card: ‘Relativity’ - people evaluate options comparing to what is around them. Idea: to increase the amount of repair options they see in their day-to-day life. Such as: work with school groups on repair projects, collect old toys at schools for repair and donation, increase advertising spend around repair, create a repair studio in-store and provide rewards, at original point of sale sign customers up to a free repair club)
Step 3 - go through the ideas and select the most promising for testing.
What are your favourite circular economy tools? Let me know in the comments.
